Faith Forward

Simeon took the baby in his arms and thanked God: “Now, Lord, you can let me, your servant, die in peace as you said. I have seen with my own eyes how you will save your people. Now all people can see your plan. He is a light to show your way to the other nations. And he will bring honor to your people Israel.”

~ Luke 2: 28-32

Not much is known about a man named Simeon, other than he was a devout righteous man. We also know he was full of the Holy Spirit, and this was many years before Pentecost when the Holy Spirit was revealed to the new Christians. The few words Simeon spoke, would be written down for all generations to hear. His words were the help set the foundation for our Christian faith, today.

Simeon had a belief in the message of the ancient prophets, of the coming Messiah. Many years had passed but Simeon still watched, waited and believed. The Holy Spirit had told him that he would see the Messiah before his death and prompted him to go to the temple on the very day that Mary and Joseph brought baby Jesus to dedicate him to God

We need to keep in mind that Jesus was only a baby. He had not started his ministry. He had not performed any miracles. He had not died on the cross or risen from the dead. Today, we have all of the story in the Bible to come to our faith, however Simeon, with nothing more than a baby boy, Mary, Joseph, and most importantly, the Holy Spirit, looked at this child and knew. I’m sure his eyes filled with tears as he took baby Jesus in his arms and proclaimed, “Now I can die because I have seen how you will save your people.”

The very beginning of the Christian faith was displayed right here in this room of the temple, even though the term Christian had not yet come into existence. But Simeon also said one other important thing, “He will bring God to the Gentile nation.” This is all before Peter was shown the blanket of unclean animals coming down from heaven; his commission to preach to the Gentiles.

These words were amazing to Mary and Joseph and are amazing words for us today. Simeon’s faith was a forward faith. He could see that Jesus would be rejected and sorrow would pierce the hearts of his parents. In this helpless little baby, he could see the Redeemer.

Ours is a backward faith, in that we have the message in its entirety, in the Bible, and we can believe. But we can also have a forward faith, by believing that Christ will one day return. It’s a promise to come, just as the promise to Simeon that the Messiah would come.

Dearest Savior, Thank you for the completed message we have in your word. Help us to grow in faith. Amen

Public and Private

And let us consider how to stir up one another to love and good works, not neglecting to meet together, as is the habit of some, but encouraging one another, and all the more as you see the Day drawing near.

~ Hebrews 10:24-25

No Christian and, indeed, no historian could accept the epigram which defines religion as “what a man does with his solitude.” It was one of the Wesleys, I think, who said that the New Testament knows nothing of solitary religion. We are forbidden to neglect the assembling of ourselves together. Christianity is already institutional in the earliest of its documents. The Church is the Bride of Christ. We are members of one another.

In our own age the idea that religion belongs to our private life— that it is, in fact, an occupation for the individual’s hour of leisure—is at once paradoxical, dangerous, and natural. It is paradoxical because this exaltation of the individual in the religious field springs up in an age when collectivism is ruthlessly defeating the individual in every other field. . . . .

There is a crowd of busybodies, self-appointed masters of ceremonies, whose life is devoted to destroying solitude wherever solitude still exists. They call it “taking the young people out of themselves,” “waking them up,” or “overcoming their apathy.” If an Augustine, a Vaughan, a Traherne, or a Wordsworth should be born in the modern world, the leaders of a youth organization would soon cure him. If a really good home, such as the home of Alcinous and Arete in the Odyssey or the Rostovs in War and Peace or any of Charlotte M. Yonge’s families, existed today, it would be denounced as bourgeois and every engine of destruction would be leveled against it.

And even where the planners fail and someone is left physically by himself, the wireless has seen to it that he will be—in a sense not intended by Scipio— never less alone than when alone. We live, in fact, in a world starved for solitude, silence, and privacy, and therefore starved for meditation and true friendship.

Lord, let me always remember the benefits of both public and private worship and work. Amen.

~ from “The Weight of Glory” by C. S. Lewis